The Selkie's Child

A Modern Fairy Tale

Seals by Albert Bierstadt (from Wikiart)

I didn’t know it was him when I took my solitary walks along on the sandy beach near our farm and sometimes a curious large grey seal followed me, swimming through the calm waters near the shore and popping its sleek dark head up periodically to look upon me with large brown eyes. And I didn’t know it was him when I sat on the sand on the crescent-shaped cove observing a group of seals sunbathing on the rock out in water and sometimes one large grey seal would keep his head turned toward me the whole time, his gazed fixed upon me. And I didn’t know it was him on the cold, cloudy summer morning of my sixteenth birthday when I watched a large grey seal ride a clear, light-blue wave right onto the beach. And I didn’t know it was him as he slowly slipped out of his seal skin and stood up, naked as the day, the most beautiful man I had ever seen, with hair as blue-black as the sea on a winter’s night and large dark-brown eyes that glistened like wet beach stones, until he walked toward me, holding his seal skin, and spoke these words to me,

My son, I’ve come to take you to where you belong. It’s time now for you to live in the sea with the selkie folk.

Then I put it together. All my mother ever told me about my father was that he had lived with her on her family’s sheep farm in Orkney until I was weaned, walking, and starting to speak, but then left suddenly one summer morning never to be seen again. And two nights after that, she dreamed that she found a sack full of gold hidden in the barn, and when she awoke, sure enough, there it was, and that’s what had kept us, and the farm, going all these years. But I also could see myself how unusual I was—a boy who looked so different from the other children, with my blue-black hair and large dark-brown eyes—a boy who chose to spend his free time wild swimming and walking alone on the beach while his schoolmates enjoyed team sports, video games, and parties. So, I handed him my towel and said,

“You took your time, Dad.”

He raised his eyebrows at my words but accepted the towel, wrapping it around his waist, and sat down next to me. Then, with a sorrowful look on his face, he said,

“I surely regret that, my son, but I am father to many, you see. Even so I’ve been keeping an eye on you all these years, and what a bonnie lad you’ve been become!"

Then after that he smiled at me so radiantly and so bewitchingly that I realized here it was, the same old story I’d been hearing ever since I could remember. So, I told him,

“I never liked your story, Dad, you know, the one where a male selkie charms a woman of the land into bearing his child, leaves her a bag of gold to make up for his absence, and then returns one day to reclaim ‘his’ child….”

The wind was blowing fiercely, so I pulled my hoodie over my head, but my father looked at completely at his ease in the cold, despite being barely dressed and with sea water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders. What would it be like, I couldn’t help but wonder, to swim through waters around the island in the body of seal? To be sleek and strong and immune to the cold, to be one with the ocean? My father simply shrugged, saying,

“Ah, but that is our way, my son. It’s how we selkie folk have our children.”

That’s when I thought about my mum. Even as the gold my father had left behind helped carry us through the farm’s hard years, surely her life had been terribly lonely, with only me for company out on our remote farm. And as far as I knew, in all that time she never even had a date with anyone of any gender, much less a long-term relationship. Had she been waiting all those years for the one love of her life—this selkie—to return to her? I said to him,

“Perhaps I would have followed you right into the sea without a thought if you had returned when I was still a child. But I’m a man now, and old enough to decide for myself.”

My father smiled again, his white teeth as even and perfect as a movie star’s. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes, saying these words:

“My son, your choice is simple: a sheep farm or the glorious wild ocean, a life of drudgery or a life of freedom, utter predictability or pure joy.”

And that’s when I decided to find a different ending to my parents’ story with its simplistic either/or choices. The wind had gradually become gentler, and the dark sky was lightening. As I began to feel warmer, my body started to relax. I said,

“I will not return with you to the selkie folk. Nor will I take over the family farm as my mother wishes. Instead, come September I will leave this island and take my place at the University of Aberdeen, and who knows what would happen after that.”

As I stood up to leave, the sun burst through a space between two clouds, bringing the entire landscape—both land and sea—into vivid technicolor. And I saw the waters in the cove dancing and shimmering in a beam of sunlight.

“Farewell, Father,” I said. “You can keep the towel.”